Austen Summative Visits & Outings

EMMA

SENSE & SENSIBILITY

Specific Outings/Passages

The morning party to DONWELL ABBEY

Estate owned by George Knightley.
Described by Austen as being as a "sweet view—sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive." = what effect does the repetition of 'English' have?

  • 1957, Lionel Trilling (American critic) cited this passage for its "national feeling" = Intro to Emma, Boston edition
  • Austen derives national identity from this neat, pleasing landscape (Jonathan Bate, 2000)
  • Anthony Mandal, 'Language' in Jane Austen in Context = Knightley and Donwell are both "synecdochic of a larger national conception of Englishness"

1815 = Battle of Waterloo

"Austen's readers have long made it perform considerable ideological work. It has often been viewed through a patriotic haze, conscripted as Austen's contribution to the nation-defining discourse of the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic era. And it has been seen as a mark of Austen's tacit complicity with the social structures of late Enlightenment England, neatly divided into country estates, each thoroughly surveyed, painted or sketched and legitimately owned by a ruling family." = copied from jstor article Purity and Danger in Austen's Emma

Donwell Abbey = pleasing, comforting landscape vs Box Hill = problematic and dangerous
How do the two compare on a linguistic level?
Austen describes Donwell Abbey as the seat of the entire estate : the symbol of power itself, but not in an ostentatious way. But does the rest of the novel endorse the view of Donwell as a metonym for the entire nationalist English kingdom?
This passage uses FID and is filtered through the consciousness of all the visitors, but is primarily concerned with Emma's impressions - it accords with her personality and preoccupations = Emma in a house?

  • "As the novel demonstrates, Emma is a woman with a compulsive rage for order and, in a semiotic sense, purity." = jstor article Purity and Danger in Austen's Emma

Harriet's visit to the Martins

Emma does not dare go inside herself, and waits for Harriet outside, whilst timing it = it is 14 mins, one shorter than the dangerous 15, which she deigns too long to spend with someone of such a low class and would taint Harriet. Highlights Emma's obsession with purity which he exemplifies further at the picnic with her scathing comment to Miss Bates. Emma sees the Martins as outsiders to her social world.

Emma does not travel anywhere very often: due to her preference for clean, orderly, and familiar social environments, meaning she has not visited Box Hill before the picnic, even though it is 7 miles away, (p. 367) and has never visited her sister and brother-in-law in London, being just 16 miles away, a journey Frank C makes twice in one day. (p. 91)

BOX HILL picnic

The novel begins with Emma in intellectual solitude - she is lonely and bored. She goes into overdrive on outings and social visits/occasions and steals the spotlight every time.
Containment = Emma imagines and constructs fictional scenarios for herself and the other charcaters

Reveals Emma's true nature when she offends Miss Bates - what does the outdoor space have to do with this?

Colonel Brandon's regular visits

Visit to Cleveland

Marianne becomes deathly ill.
Willoughby visits her and apologises for his behaviour to her.
Marianne realises she was foolish to think she could ever have been happy with him.
Lots of revelations happen in this section = catharsis is achieved by many characters.

Elinor & Marianne's trip to London with Mrs Jennings

  • Where Elinor learns of Willoughby's callousness and debauched lifestyle, and where he rebuffs Marianne, saying he was never interested in her

Overshadowed by Marianne's folly attachment to Willoughby

Most of the characters in Sense and Sensibility (especially including but not limited to Lucy, Fanny, and Mrs. Ferrars) are obsessed with maintaining their family’s place on the social ladder and potentially moving up the ladder through either marriage or simply associating with wealthier, higher class friends. These kinds of social dynamics are at play at the many events like dances, parties, dinners, and more casual gatherings

Emma gets a little too comfortable with stealing the spotlight and the prize of everybody's attention, so oversteps her mark when she gets too cocky. From this point in the novel, Emma starts to have all her realisations (about Frank C, Harriet, her own feelings for Knightley etc). This can only happen after she has been humbled and brought down from her high pedestal.